It is to be observed that the Pagan deities had each their several names and places of abode, with some of which they were supposed to be more delighted than with others, and consequently to be then most propitious when invoked by the favourite name and place: hence we find the hymns of Homer, Orpheus, and Callimachus, to be chiefly employed in enumerating the several names and places of abode by which the patron god was distinguished. Now, our Poet, with great and masterly address, hath made these two circumstances serve to introduce his subject, according to the exactest rules of logic. His purpose is to write of happiness; method therefore requires that he first define what men mean by happiness, and this he does in the ornament of a poetic invocation: O happiness! our being's end and aim, Good, pleasure, case, content! whate'er thy NAME. After the DEFINITION, that which follows next, in order of method, is the PROPOSITION, which here is, that human happiness consists not in external advantages, but in virtue. For the subject of this Epistle is the detecting the false notions of happiness, and settling and explaining the true; and this the Poet lays down in the next sixteen lines. Now the enumeration of happiness's several supposed places of abode (which, in imitation of the ancient Poets, he next mentions in the invocation, and which makes ten of the sixteen lines) is a summary of false happiness, placed in externals: Plant of celestial seed! if dropt below, Say in what mortal soil thou deign'st to grow? The six remaining lines deliver the true notion of happiness to be in virtue. Which is summ'd up in these two; Fixt to no spot is happiness sincere, "Tis no where to be found, or every where. The Poet, having thus defined his terms, and laid down his his proposition, proceeds to the support of his thesis; the various arguments of which make up the body of the Epistle. He begins [from 1. 18 to 27] with detecting the false notions of happiness. These are of two kinds, the philosophical and popular: the latter he had recapitulated in the invocation, when happiness was call'd upon at her several supposed places of abode; the philosophic then only remained to be delivered. Ask of the learn'd the way, the learn'd are blind, The confutation of these philosophic errors, he shews to be very easy, one common fallacy running through them all; namely this, That, instead of telling us in what the happiness of human nature consists, which was what was asked of them, each busies himself to explain in what he placed his own peculiar happiness: Who thus define it, say they more or less And here, before we go any farther, it will be proper to turn to our Logician, who, blind to these beauties in the admirable disposition of the subject, is extremely scandalized at the Poet for not proceeding immediately to explain true happiness (after having defined his terms and delivered his thesis) but for going back again (as he fancies) to a consideration of the false.-Speaking of the sixteen lines, he says," Happiness is then near me, "and I feel myself considerably refreshed; but, by ill "luck, it is only for a moment, my doubts presently "return, and I find myself in the hands of a Poet, who "can do what he will with me, and who, having placed "me on the very borders of happiness, on a sudden 66 shuts all its avenues*. up But a very little patience and impartiality would have shewn him, that they were immediately laid open again in the very next lines [from 26 to 33] where the Poet shews, that if you will but take the road of nature, and leave that of mad opinion, you will soon find happiness Commentaire, p. 271. .to to be a good of the species, and, like common sense, equally distributed to all mankind: Take Nature's path, and mad opinion's leave, But this is so far from satisfying our bully-critic, that it only furnishes him with fresh matter for a quarrel. He is much offended at the two first lines. 66 -I must "here renew my complaints. Take Nature's path, you say; and what am I to understand by this Nature? "Must I take the reasonable nature for my guide? But, according to you, the philosophers have consulted it to "no purpose. Shall I give myself up to the animal "nature? This would soon reduce me to great dis"tresses.—Encompassed with doubts and difficulties, "what have I left, but to suffer myself to be borne away by chance or hazard? And to conclude, that the "counsel here given of taking Nature's path, comes at length to this, to march steadily on in the footsteps of "fatality*." It would be hard indeed, if our Commentator could not find the road to fatality, in every step the Poet takes. But here, in avoiding the horns of his own chimerical dilemma, he jumps upon it more aukwardly than usual. The Poet, says he, must either mean the reasonable, or the animal nature. Agreed. He could not mean the animal nature. This too is true. Nor the reasonable. Why not? Because it stood the philosophers in no stead. What then? Do you think he has ever the worse opinion of it on that account? They could not possibly have run into more mistakes about happiness, than you have about the Poet's meaning: And yet, for all that, I apprehend he will think never the worse, either of reason or himself. But what is indeed incredible, after Mr. De Crousaz had thus commented the two first lines, he goes on with bis remarks on the immediately following, Obvious her goods, &c. in these words: "See Mr. Pope once again * Commentaire, pp. 272, 273. "under "under the necessity of restoring rsason to its rights*.' Prodigious! It seems then, after all, Mr. Pope by Nature's path, did indeed mean the reasonable nature. For we now see it was Mr. De Crousas, not Mr. Pope, that was under the necessity of restoring reason to its rights. To proceed: the Poet having exposed the two false species of happiness, the PHILOSOPHICAL and POPULAR, and denounced the true, in order to establish the last, goes on to a confutation of the two former. I. He first [from 1. 32 to 47] confutes the PHILOSOPHICAL, which, as we said, makes happiness a particular, not a general good: and this two ways: 1. From his grand principle, That God acts by general laws the consequence of which is, that happiness, which supports the well-being of every system, must needs be universal, and not partial, as the philosophers conceived: Remember, Man! the universal Cause Acts not by partial, but by genral laws; 2. From fact, That Man instinctively concurs with this designation of Providence, to make happiness universal, by his having no delight in any thing uncommunicated or uncommunicable: There's not a blessing individuals find, But some way leans and hearkens to the kind. II. The Poet, in the second place [from 1. 46 to 65] confutes the POPULAR error concerning happiness, namely, that it consists in externals: which he does, 1. By inquiring into the reasons of the present providential disposition of external goods: a topic of confutation chosen with the greatest accuracy and penetration. For, if it appears they were distributed in the manner we see them, for reasons different from the happiness of individuals, Commentaire, p. 281. individuals, it is absurd to think that they should make part of that happiness. He shews, therefore, that disparity of external possessions among men was for the sake of society, i. to promote the harmony and happiness of a system; Order is Heaven's first law; and, this confest, Because the want of external goods in some, and the abundance in others, increase general harmony in the obliger and obliged. Yet here (says he) mark the impartial wisdom of Heaven; this very inequality of externals, by contributing to general harmony and order, produceth an equality of happiness amongst individuals; and, for that very reason, Heaven to mankind impartial we confess, If all are equal in their happiness: But mutual wants this happiness increase, 2. This disparity was necessary, because, if external goods were equally distributed, they would occasion perpetual discord amongst men all equal in power: But fortune's gifts if each alike possest, And each were equal, must not all contest? From hence he concludes, That, as external goods were not given for the reward of virtue, but for many different purposes, God could not, if he intended happiness for all, place it in the enjoyment of externals: If then to all men happiness was meant, 2. His second argument [from 1. 64 to 71] against the popular error of happiness's being placed in externals, is, that the possession of them is inseparably attended I 3 with |